Under the Old Magnolia Tree

Unsurprisingly, in a state that holds its traditions close to its heart, concerns such a decision would impugn our heritage and “erase history” quickly arose in newspapers, on social media, and at dinner tables around Mississippi. No matter that the current state flag, which includes the battle flag’s saltire, never flew during the Confederacy (it was raised decades later, in 1894): If ever the emblem had a lifespan, some observers argue, it is never more apparent than now. Yet this is not the first time the debate has arisen. As Bradley Bond detailed in his Mississippi: A Documentary History, Mississippians voted overwhelmingly in a 2001 referendum to keep the current flag, a vote that until October, Governor Phil Bryant had insisted stood. Now Bryant—reelected by a significant margin on November 3—has softened his position, suggesting the issue could return to the ballot next year.

Times have changed, critics say, and Mississippi has changed; back in 2001, while Dylann Roof was in second grade, there were no racially motivated murders galvanizing the flag debate—only a commission led by top state officials, hardly the stuff to quicken the pulse of the electorate. Bryant, in fact, faces dissent from within his own conservative ranks, as a growing number of Mississippi’s representatives both in Jackson and in Washington urge revisiting the symbol in the wake of the tragedy. And it is undeniable that in recent years the state has become far more open about confronting the injustices in its history: Not only have civil rights-era murderers such as Byron De La Beckwith and Edgar Ray Killen been tried and convicted, but a major new civil rights museum is due to open in Jackson in 2017. Rather than denying the past, today’s Mississippians are increasingly willing to look it square in the eye.

But as old habits die hard, so do old hurts. Among adult whites, it only takes going back three or four generations to reach ancestors who fought for the Confederacy, ancestors who passed on their fierce love of state to their children and grandchildren. On the flip side of the coin, to reach veterans of the civil rights struggle who grew up under Jim Crow, it only takes a phone call. All Mississippians—white and black, urban and rural, liberal and conservative—feel the weight of history keenly. We in the deepest part of the South wonder sometimes how folks elsewhere consider it so easy to “let it all go.”

Another reason this debate has persisted, however, is that, six months after the events that reignited it, no one has yet offered any serious alternatives to the rebel flag, were it finally to come down. It is one thing to dismantle a symbol—which is not the same thing as obliterating it—but we have to replace it with another. The lesson is not lost to history: Knowing the symbol of apartheid could not stand in a young democracy, the architects of regime change in another racially torn society, South Africa, ultimately produced the flag of the “rainbow nation” to symbolize their new, common project. And it is here that, ironically, Mississippi’s own history might offer a way forward, with the flag used right before the current one.

If lawmakers (or Facebook commenters) are looking for a suitable alternative, they could do worse than the flag flown from 1861 to 1894, with its red, white, and blue coloration and sketch of the magnolia, the state’s official tree and flower, which give it the moniker the Magnolia State. A symbol around which all Mississippians can gather, the magnolia is emblematic of our favorite pastimes: spending time outdoors, fishing and hunting, eating and drinking at picnics and reunions, even just enjoying the cool of the shade on a summer’s day. Emotionally, the symbol calls to mind hospitality and welcome, qualities that every self-respecting Southerner, no matter skin color, holds dear. Critics may object that this flag, flying over the state during its membership in the Confederacy, has no place in a reunited union. Fair enough: In that case, take the iconography and update it with a modern design. But either way, consider how incorporating a previous flag would simultaneously move forward from a painful symbol and silence critics decrying the “erasure” of our past. Indeed, unless Mississippians remain mindful of that past—no matter how painful—we will always run the risk of its return.

Times change; I should know. As an eighth-generation Mississippian and descendant of slaveholders, whose great-great-grandfather named Forrest County after Nathan Bedford Forrest out of the personal admiration he felt for the man, by rights I should have inherited the same opinions he held—if Mississippi were the isolated, backwater place its critics love to insinuate it is. Times continue to change: Days after Ole Miss lowered its flag, so did the University of Southern Mississippi, with talk of Mississippi State University swiftly following. Granted, recent polling suggests that, at least for now, the flag will remain atop the statehouse. But if the debate yields another vote, in an emotional political environment, it is anybody’s guess what will happen. Regardless, one thing is clear: It is not enough simply to remove a symbol from a position of importance. Rather, we must find a symbol around which we can all come together, a symbol that—ironically, paradoxically, fortuitously—may well come from our own benighted past.

A native Mississippian, Benjamin Morris is a poet, writer, and researcher at the Open University (U.K.) and the author of Hattiesburg, Mississippi: A History of the Hub City (History Press, 2014).